Cancer is evolution [wikipedia.org] on a cellular level, without any foresight into whether it's a good idea long term.

Apple evolved with the loss of Jobs. Remember that evolution doesn't imply change toward something we like, just a change to better fit the current situation. Apple seems to have evolved away from the tactics that made it so successful. I expect that this evolution will end up damaging Apple, possibly killing it, though that's likely wishful thinking on my part because I don't like the walled garden approach.

It could be that Apple evolved in a bad direction because a cell in Steve Jobs' liver evolved in a bad direction.

You missed the very next sentence. "Evolution" is a neutral term that means changing, essentially. Most people think it means "improving" but that is not the case. If humans were to change back to single celled organisms due to natural selection, that would still be evolution. Apple changing to a losing strategy is still "evolution" even if it's going to destroy them.

"Devolution" is like "deceleration" in that they're words that people use, but they're both actually included in the original meaning of the word that people misuse. If you slow down, that's still a change in velocity, which is acceleration. If a species gets simpler and weaker, that's still a change in genetics over time, which is still evolution.

Technology only destroys jobs if you accept that the vast majority of the improvement in quality of life resulting from less labor required for survival should be reserved for a handful of plutocrats. Employment is low. Profits are high. Fewer people work more to get less out of fear that they will be cut next.

What technology can do is increase everyone's quality of life. Lower the work week to 32 hours and abolish the distinction between part time and full time employees and increase minimum wage to a scale that follows the cost of basic food, utilities, shelter and transportation (it would be around $18 an hour if it had been). More people working less and having more time for family or other hobbies that actually make life worth living.

While I love the idea of shortening the work week to increase employment, the minimum wage cannot be a living wage. It makes no damn sense.

You need a place to work as a teenager. Someplace to develop the basic skills needed on every job: show up on time, well groomed, and ready to work, don't be a dick to your customers, and so on. You should not get a living wage for this job, because (a) you don't need it, these are the jobs you start with while still living at home, and (b) employers couldn't afford it - with a low enough wage, 100% employment of teens who can barely do anything is practical, and was common. That's the point of a minimum-wage job - it a job that you can always get, to learn how to work, and to get enough experience to get a "real" job.

A semi-skilled job, the bottom tier of jobs that one would do as an independent adult, that requires a bit more then just showing up, that should pay a living wage.

Re:Out of jobs? (Score:?)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29, 2013 @08:07PM

Minimum wage jobs are not just for teenagers. There just are not enough teenagers to man every grocery store, every restaurant, every retail outlet, etc. Millions of people are attempting to support families on minimum or barely above minimum wage jobs. These people need to be able to support their families just like anyone else.

The only other option to a reasonable minimum wage is a guaranteed minimum income. And we don't have nearly enough automation to deal with the people who would simply choose not to work given the the option.

Not true. Consider all the fawning service jobs which have nothing to do with the needs of humanity and are there only to serve the ignorant ego of humanity. An ugly oppressive ego espoused by the few and forced on the many.

Auto-driving cars would only have minimal impact on employment for example the biggest impact on employment would have been by earth moving equipment, positively huge impact on employment but no one in the sane mind would bitch about that especially those who used to do the manual lab

2a. Prices plummet as demand decreases. Less money in the hands of the consumers means less demand for everything. Any company that wants to continue to exist drops prices to match the lowered costs of production, thus eliminating the "additional profit" there would have been had sales remained constant.

4. Workers find new jobs in the service sector (serving mostly former employers).

One of the first adopters of automation will be the service sector. Imagine being able to remove the employee costs at a McDonalds by presenting a display of items to the consumer who selects his choices and then waits a few minutes for the food to pop out of a window.

Automats [wikipedia.org] were one of the early "robotic" systems in service. Now that we have NFC and "wave your card at the cash register" payments, there is no reason for them not to come back in big style. Especially if costs can be cut and there are a lot of people out of work because larger scale automated systems have made them redundant. It's nice to walk into a Subway and have a low-paid "sandwich specialist" make your sandwich to order, but in the long run it will be a choice between paying for personal service like that at full price or being able to eat at all.

Technology does destroy jobs (well sometimes creates jobs in other areas as well), but the same is produced for less, so in effect society is better off. The problem is not with technology but with the method of resource distribution. As you need less and less jobs the wealth gets distributed more unevenly.

The current system (capitalism) was ok, and maybe even necessary when we where not producing enough for people to survive, it encouraged people to produce more, but now we are producing enough to survive, to excess even. Society has a to find a better way of distributing wealth. If we don't the 99% will either die off because they are not needed, rebel because they don't accept dieing. If the 99% do die then the 1% will be split up again 99% of them will become redundant.

If the goal is to own as much as you can, and it is all based on greed and you can make a robots that can produce anything that you want, why would you want any other person around taking up your natural resources?

Once concern is that over the past 50 years the lowest rungs have been knocked out of the labor market. The gas attendant would graduate to the assistant mechanic, to a full mechanic. Now many low skilled entry level jobs lead nowhere.

When robots do all the work, Marx' old question about the ownership of the means of production (and of raw materials and land) becomes acutely relevant. If the top 1% own the robots, the 99% is pretty much useless. Robots will be able to provide the masses with a minimum of housing and comforts to keep them placated, and there will be a small middle class of researchers, technicians and entertainers, but that'll be it. Not a very bright future... When robots do all the work, socialism suddenly starts to look a lot more attractive (I never though I'd write those words).

Such a system will collapse because the top 1% needs the rest of the population to buy the products they make. So if everyone is unemployed, there's no way the top 1% can run a profitable business. What is most likely to happen under extreme automation and AI is that the robots will grow our food, cut our hair, mine the land, drive our cars and take care of us...and humanity can just sit back and relax forever.

Long before that was allowed to take place, the power brokers would manufacture new dependencies. Most likely though will be a simple cascade collapse of society and our robots stemming from a scarcity of resources. 6+ billion people cannot live the lifestyle of western civilization while being constrained to the resources of Earth.

Oh, you mean in the future when we have a two tier system where the top 1% don't have to work, but the rest of us have menial jobs because technology has replaced all of the formerly middle class jobs that one could raise a family on.

Do you realize how silly that sounds? The rich just can't consume that much more than the rest of us.

No matter how rich you are, you can only drive 1 car at a time. You might buy "four Cadillacs, one for each direction", or forty it you're a collector and just like to look at them, but you have no use for 1000.

No matter how rich you are, you can only live in 1 house at a time. You might buy four houses, one for each season, but there's no point in buying forty.

No matter how rich you are, you can't drink more than 100 beers a week (someone used to have that as his sig). You can only eat so much. You can spend all you want on hookers and blow, but that just means you die and the money gets redistributed.

Money is just a placeholder. If robots are making enough cars, house, food, and drink for everyone, it just won't matter if the "1%" (really the 100 richest families) consumes 10x everyone else. The robots are still making enough for everyone.

People spouting this doom and gloom stuff are just projecting the latest economic downturn to infinity, when the economy is cyclic. It's like measuring the temperatures rising throughout summer, and predicting the oceans will boil in 5 years. Give it a rest.

If you can only imagine the future in terms of the current economic system, you can't really imagine the future. We don't have the same economy we had 50 years ago, and that one was nothing like those before it. To presume the current model will persist indefinitely is pure ego.

I don't employ any people in my car so you must mean the chauffeurs in the yellow cars who speak only Pashto or Urdu?

TFA seems to be arguing (not unreasonably) that if you've solved the machine vision and 'coping with surprisingly unpredictable environments' problems well enough to put a car on the road without being bankrupted by splattered pedestrians and next of kin, you've probably also solved the problems that were keeping our robot overlords out of a lot of 'semi-structured' environments that have not previously been economic to automate.

Conventional industrial automation is unstoppably, brutally, efficient; but you pretty much have to build the entire environment around the robots; because they are dumb as hell if anything doesn't go to plan (though, so long as it does, they can stuff boards or spot-weld chassis parts like nobody's business). If you solve the problems inherent in driving a car, you've made substantial progress in attacking environments that aren't built around robots and their limitations, which opens up many more just-sloppy-enough-to-confuse-robots and not-labor-intensive-enough-to-rebuild-for-robots workplaces.

Sure, a few Johnnycabs might be the most visible; but that'll be the tip of the iceberg.

TFA seems to be arguing (not unreasonably) that if you've solved the machine vision and 'coping with surprisingly unpredictable environments' problems well enough to put a car on the road without being bankrupted by splattered pedestrians and next of kin, you've probably also solved the problems that were keeping our robot overlords out of a lot of 'semi-structured' environments that have not previously been economic to automate.

Well, duh. I figured that out a decade ago; that's why I got into software engi

They are nearly identical. In fact the flying bit is arguably a bit easier in some ways.

No, adding the third dimension to the problem really does increase the complexity, as well as create special problems like "how do I handle an engine failure while enroute", which in an automotive environment means "pull over and wait for a tow truck", but in an aeronautical one involves finding a place on the ground without anyone already occupying it and somehow maneuvering your crippled vehicle to that location -- and hoping it is within gliding distance.

Taxi drivers are only the tip of the iceberg, most people are employed transporting goods B2B, B2C or C2B. Who do you think brings the groceries to the grocery store? Deliver you pizza? Collect your trash? A self-driving car would solve the hardest part, being able to load up a truck and have someone meet it at the other end would be huge. Also imagine all the people who can be more effective by doing paperwork and such while going site to site instead of driving, that too should let fewer people do the same work. A self-driving car is going to be an Industrial Revolution-class change.

Thing is, what happens when someone decides to stand in front of an auto cab in order to cause a denial of service attack? The car won't run you over and will probably be programmed to take no action that it can reasonably predict will harm a human including trying to get around you.

You'll need fleet managers driving around, troubleshooting issues and making higher level decisions for the cars. And probably humans working in other parts of the system.

Thing is, what happens when someone decides to stand in front of an auto cab in order to cause a denial of service attack? The car won't run you over and will probably be programmed to take no action that it can reasonably predict will harm a human including trying to get around you.

How is that different than standing in front of a cab with a human driver? Either the driver (or car) will back up and maneuver around you, or the driver and/or car will call dispatch (or the police) to say he's blocked in. Human drivers are (normally) programmed to take no action that can be reasonably predicted to harm a human, but turning around or otherwise maneuvering to get around an obstacle (even a human obstacle) is not necessarily going to trigger that response.

How is that different than standing in front of a cab with a human driver?

The difference is that currently, most people avoid running into the streets, because there is considerable danger even if the closest car is far enough away to stop. When a large percentage of the cars on the road can auto-detect humans in the road and stop themselves, a pedestrian jaywalking problem seems inevitable. Rude people in large cities are already willing to just walk into traffic if it is slow enough. Another 20 years and there might not be much deterrent to taking a leisurely stroll across a highway as well.

In theory, a couple dozen people spread out along a highway could cause large slowdowns with little risk to themselves or the passengers, but I'm betting those artificial traffic jams will still be quicker to resolve than current ones since you can just send in the hoverdrones to stun & arrest the roadblockers.

Nevermind the increases in safety. Nevermind the new jobs that this will enable. Nevermind the greater standard of living this will bring to all people. We've got to be concerned about potentially lost jobs above all else.

I'm curious - what new careers do you foresee, that current professional drivers would qualify for? Or are you saying they should give up their fairly-decent-wage driving work and go flip burgers whilst sucking hind teet for minimum wage, social consequences be damned?

See, that's the real problem - I'm sure we can all come up with a million ideas for work the next few generations can do, but that means precisely jack shit to the current generation who will lose their only source of income.

What's the stop-gap for the time period between auto-cars taking work from humans, work they need to pay their bills, and the creation of these ephemeral 'new jobs' that won't exist for a good while?

Probably none. But I don't think the picture is as dire as you paint it because the change from "driver" cars to driver-less cars isn't going to be instant. It's not like all truckers are gonna lose their jobs tomorrow or next years. It's gonna be a gradual process over the next ten or maybe twenty years.

I'm curious - what new careers do you foresee, that current professional drivers would qualify for?

I was a trucker for 20 years. I've just been given an offer of a place at a top 10 university to do a BEng (Hons) in Electronics Engineering. Not all of us do trucking because we're incapable of doing anything else and I find your insinuation that we are quite insulting.

I'm curious - what new careers do you foresee, that current professional drivers would qualify for?

I was a trucker for 20 years. I've just been given an offer of a place at a top 10 university to do a BEng (Hons) in Electronics Engineering. Not all of us do trucking because we're incapable of doing anything else and I find your insinuation that we are quite insulting.

I find your assumption that my statement is an insinuation of an inherent lack of non-driving-related skills, and thus an insult to professional drivers, quite telling - Firstly, being offered an opportunity to pay for a Bachelor's Degree isn't really all that impressive, considering how many other people in the world have received similar offers. It's also not a paying job, so far as I'm aware; what will you do to cover expenses while in the program?

Let it play out, hope that capitalism will prevail and that we will be better off in the end.

Make automation beyond some point illegal or create so many regulations as it effectively outlaw such automation (where is Dr. Baltar when we need him?).

Restructure society to deal with the new realities of a world where we just do not need people to work. Let people have food, entertainment, and a comfortable life without forcing them to work for the privilege. For those fe

I'm not answering your question because your question is stupid. Your position has the same validity as that of the Luddites. If you want to rehash that debate, go ahead, but is has been by and large settled to the point that "Luddite" is an insult.

It'll bring a greater standard of those who still have jobs. We're looking at a very serious economic transition here, possibly a key point in history. How it is managed is the difference between a utopia free of work and want, or a dystopia where the poverty-stricken masses scavenge for scraps thrown out from the farms owned by the wealthy.

Where does the idea come from that the job you're doing today is your eternal identity?

um, society? You can't change jobs too often or you're considered a flight risk and not considered hireable. You can't stay at one place too long or you're considered stagnant, and not hireable. If you're in your 30s and not in middle management, you're considered a failure, and not hireable (even if that's what you're applying for!). If you don't have a continuous job record for whatever reason, you're worse than a failure and can't get a job, even doing scutwork at min wage. Even the scutwork jobs have 'college' as a requirement now. wtf?

HR depts are using all these stupid metrics to decide candidacy, and that's why it's nearly impossible for them to fill jobs. 15% of the american population is out of work, while companies all want someone who is clean cut, has a college education, reliable transportation, and no legal record...even while they offer shit wages that cannot possibly pay for all of those things. Meanwhile, those 'lucky' enough to be employees are expected to work crazy hours so they can take out crazy loans just to make ends meet (car, college, home).

This modern life was supposed to be easier than that backbreaking rural labor lifestyle, right? Where did we go wrong?

It will destroy jobs like the farm destroyed the jobs of hunters and gatherers. It happens. If you can be replaced by a cheap machine, find another line of work where the quality that you can produce beats the machines.

I have a lot of sympathy with this point of view, but there is a problem with it.

George Carlin said, to paraphrase, look at how stupid the average guy is and realize that half of the people are dumber than that.

My point is that we are not going to have a country with nothing but doctors, high-end engineers, programers, and tech people. Not everyone has the brainpower to do that. We have to have something to do or we with have the society in Vonnegut's Player Piano.

That could be the real challenge... what are we going to do when it's not economical for a human to do ANY busy work. Even the not-so-bright need something to do.

Come on, man, Wells explained this almost a century ago. The general busy-working masses that don't have the brainpower to be a "high-end engineer or tech person" live in a leisure garden paradise and do nothing, while the engineers and tech people live underground, keep the general machinery of the world ticking, and occasionally kill and eat one of the those surface-dwelling Eloi for sustenance. Simple!

Maybe we will have societies where people can relax all day because there is no need for them to work. Maybe one day the most intelligent people will be offered a chance to live in luxurious accommodations that are not available to the rest of society, in exchange for working -- while everyone else can spend their days relaxing sans luxury.

Already here. Welfare - where no one is hungry, but the poor are over-weight because they cannot afford health club memberships, and just 42 inch flat screens, not 60 inchers. How many people do the police pick up off the streets any day because they have starved to death?

The things these articles miss is that in the future you won't ever need to leave your house. People won't own a car much less a self driving one. You won't need a hyper loop because there will be no traffic on the empty freeways. There will still exist a need to move food, water, and air around. But people can stay home. Not like they have jobs to go to.:)

I'm trying really hard to find a way to side with the humans on this one but I'm failing. I simply cannot figure out how to justify opposing this, particularly in reference to jobs like over-the-road trucking and basic shuttle-vehicle jobs such as buses and cabs. I can only imagine how much this would alleviate trafic in cities, cars with no ego behind the wheel, and how many meth-addled over-the-road truckers won't be behind the wheel (and honestly most should probably be replaced with improved freight r

I think it's very clear that most of the truck drivers will be replaced by autonomous trucks driven by software. Human drivers need to sleep, robots don't. As our storage warehouses are already mostly on the wheels and logistics is optimized that the required goods arrive just in time, all this makes sense.
The change might even be very fast. 30% of truck cargo might be driven by robots in the end of the decade.

I think the introduction of "self-driving cars" would bring about a counter-balancing upsurge in jobs in the automotive/bodywork repair industry (at least for the first few generations of the technology).

there is just absolutely no way anyone can predict what kind of spin-offs will be created given the rise of autonomous cars...perhaps entire new industries (cough like IT cough) will be created that require real humans to work on and fix our new 4-wheeled overlords. In fact, it's almost a given.

what IS guaranteed, however, is CHANGE...and man is that frightening for some people. i like to remember the old phrase "the only constant is change" at times like this.

There are plenty of circumstances where we have machines that are extensively automated and we still have highly trained people operate them. Commercial aircraft have pilots there because there are too many circumstances where a person is going to be best able to make the right decision. Most of the time, these planes are running on autopilot and they do very well. But the circumstances where the autopilot fails (i.e. does the wrong thing) can have catastrophic consequences. So we have multiple pilots there

Every time I hear this argument, I think of the book player piano. Anyway, why do people want jobs that are replaceable by machines? It makes about as much sense as hiring someone to cut my grass with a pair of scissors, just so they have something to do. Or those useless construction workers holding a stop sign, that could literally be replaced with a piece of wood.

This is the old Luddite argument: without technology a lot more effort is required to get things done -- so more people get work. It follows that technology is bad.

In fact, the situation is exactly the opposite: if a machine can drive a car, then having a person drive the car is a waste of the person's time. They can instead do something else with their time, so society get both that and the driving done. In the 19th century, more than 80% of US population directly worked in agriculture. Today, the propotion is 2-3% -- yet we have a lot more food, and many other things to boot.

It's true that in the short term, there is a loss when the specialized skills (say driving) of the people displaced become less valuable, and those people lose their jobs. But this is a transient effect. Some skills were standard 30 years ago, yet rare today.

The more important issue is that technology more easily replaces low-skilled workers. Computers have reduced the demand for secretarial work; robots and other industrial automation reduce the demand for factory workers, and so on. This increases the returns to IQ and education, and reduces the number of well-paying jobs available to less-educated workers. But this seems inevitable, and needs to be solved by changing the attitudes of society toward education rather than by hamstringing technological progress.

Exactly. It's easy to have enough "jobs" for everyone. Give anyone without a job a teaspoon and point them to a ditch that needs digging or a hole that needs filling.

The point is to have people doing jobs that contribute the most/build the most wealth. For that, anything that can be done more economically by machines should be so those humans (the real scarce resource) can be freed up to do more of things that they do better than machines.

One of the big ideas behind "modernization" was that, in general, people could work less and enjoy more benefits. Indeed, our per-person output has skyrocketed. The idea that we could get even more productive in the future is a conditionally great one. The big "if" is that right now, in the US, almost all of the benefit is being concentrated at the top-end of the economic spectrum. Indeed, our GDP has more than recovered from the recession even though most people are still suffering because of even more recent wealth concentration.

When normal people receive even half the benefits of modernization, its a good thing, and net job loss will be more than outpaced by work reduction.

Back in 2007 the company I work for (manufacturing) was going to outsource my entire department to a company in Taiwan. The logic was that there was no way we overpaid ($100K+ per engineer), lazy (40-50 hrs/week) Americans could do what the industrious (60-70 hrs/week) and inexpensive ($24K/yr) Taiwanese could do. It was an obvious win-win for the company bean-counters.

However, when I was hired a few years before this, I began implementing a whole lot of automation into our stone-age processes. They were still keeping all production records in Excel spreadsheets and paper notebooks for fucks sake. Bar codes? RFID? What were those? I modernized the place, and after a few years of attrition we had fewer low-paid manufactuing drones working in the department, but we no longer needed them.

SO the bean counters did their cost audit and were shocked beyond belief that the American factory was producing goods WAY cheaper than they could get them produced in Taiwan. Taiwan came back with a cheaper offer, but it was STILL higher than our costs. The bean counters did another audit, because they knew there was NO WAY we could produce goods cheaper than Taiwan. Results: We sure can.

So, as a result of some (admittedly crude) automation, I and those who helped me with the automation, saved hundreds of jobs in the US from being offshored. And now my department is mosty highly trained (and well paid) engineers and technicians rather than mostly low paid people who move stuff from machine to machine. We still have the people who move stuff around, but they are fewer, more efficient and paid more than they were before. And the equipment is better maintained and more productive than ever.

So whenever some jackwit like this says automation is killing jobs, I get to trot out my personal example of automation SAVING jobs and creating new ones.

Self-driving cars will kill some jobs, but it will create plenty of new ones, many we haven't even thought of yet.

If you look at it from a global perspective, by automating the factory you allowed X people in the USA to produce a certain amount of goods. To produce that amount of goods in Taiwan would take X*Y people. Therefore globally you actually destroyed jobs via that automation.

Read Manna [marshallbrain.com] by Marshall Brain. It's an interesting view of two potential post-labor robot-driven economies. I hope we end up in the robot-driven paradise instead of the everyone-on-welfare dystopia, but I'm not convinced we will. I'm crossing my fingers for a Star Trek economy in my lifetime.

(Of course, given that we're looking perhaps a bit beyond 30 years in the future, it'll probably look very similar to today in a lot of ways with some changes that nobody predicted.)

The increasing role of technology in every sphere of life will eventually rule out all but very skilled, specialised jobs in small numbers. This is a trend that started in the industrial age, and no amount of legislation will stop the fact that we simply don't need to employ as many people as we used to.

I've advocated on here before the role of a guaranteed minimum income, and this could be an opportunity to create the first real leisure society. Consumerism as we more or less know it would fund economic development still, as it does now, except the source of our income wouldn't be our increasingly obsolete labour but a guaranteed disposable income, rising gradually ahead of living costs over time.

The amount of creative works, open source projects, general hackery &c. that'll spring from having a majority of people free from having to be employed will be mind boggling.

The biggest stumbling block to this in my mind is the dismantling of "trickle up" neoliberalism and the replacement of a brain dead political class.

I saw this on the Jetsons. George Jetson goes to work, pushes three buttons, and goes right back home.

What we've seen over the past 50 years is a growth in per capital GPD, much of it due to automation. This should have led to more pay for less work, or same pay for less work. However: the median income has held steady while the "top 0.1%" has taken off. Instead of everyone working 10 hour days and getting a livable wage as the efficiency would indicate, we have people working 40-50 hour weeks for less money, while a select few get a LOT more for it - effectively getting thousands of hours of income for each week of work. The tying of insurance and other benefits to a floor in minimum hours of work made this condition worse. I know of many people, parents and artists mostly, who would LOVE to have a professional job of 20-30 hours/week and are even willing to take proportionally lower pay to get it, but our current (US) system doesn't allow it.

Robots taking jobs isn't a bad thing - there's less work to do overall. If there are fewer hours of work to go around, then either everyone works fewer hours for the same pay, or... a few people work "full-time" and everyone else gets shafted.

Quite a few sci-fi books have looked at this. I think Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps" visited a future where our protagonist worked at a junkyard where they took brand-new, off-the-lot cars and crushed them. The car builders had full-time work - the crushers had full-time work, too. That's messed up.

Eventually, almost everything will be done by technology. Even maintaining the technology will be done by technology. While it does mean more will be done, and more will be produced, this will collapse if there is not more of a market to consume it. Otherwise we will eventually get to a point that the 0.001 percenters will own all the production, and no one else will have anything to buy it with. So even the 0.001 percenters will end up losing. But how will that even be solved if there is nothing left for humans to do? Either we will have a world where no one has anything unless they have machines (and all they can produce for is themselves), or we will have socialism where the government provides everything... so the 0.001 percenters will have a market to sell to.

But a societal one. Just like the industrial revolution put a lot of manual labourers out of work, the digital revolution will do the same to the vast majority of low-and-no-skill labourers.

The moralistic notion that necessities, and even some small luxuries, need to be earned is starting to become antiquated. We need to begin seriously considering things like basic income [wikipedia.org] if we are to transition without a whole lot of bloodshed. Good luck convincing the X%.

All of us benefit from being the heirs of the industrial revolution. Even the poorest of us have better health and nutrition than before. We all have better healthcare than the mightiest king did 300 years ago. Yet for the average person who lived during the industrial revolution life was poor hell. Craftsmen and herders were sent into Dickensian factories and mines. I hope we can live long enough for the majority of citizens to see a benefit from our present computer revolution.

Robots will replace every human working in fast food eventually so what do you do to employ tens of millions of people put out of work? Look at the millions without jobs now. Even in IT a lot of automation has reduced the need for more IT engineers and to save money they are making us do more with less which forces is to rely more on automation. Robots will also evemtually replace surgeons and could replace lawyers too and so you and up with a broad swath of skill levels without jobs or money. Some sections of our society will just decide to kill the constitution and lock people up in dorms to keep these jobless out of the eye of those or we can free people to turn their attention to things that interest them. Things that they could not focus on before. Think scientist who did not have to worry about money or resources. Google manna chapter 1 and read it.

Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less. By eliminating rote jobs we gain efficiency. The utopian ideal envisioned in the 60s is that we would all be working 10-15 hour work weeks by the 90s through automation and computer technology making things more efficient.

What they completely missed is that a human will trade roughly 2000 hours per year of their life to make enough money for food and shelter. Computers and robots don't really matter, it's just that each human can produce more stuff for those 2000 hours. There is no need to let them work less or pay them any more. You just need fewer of them.

The thing is, we're still making humans at an accelerating rate. That's great for everyone who sell things to those people, as it drives demand to make more stuff. It's bad for all the extra people who - quite frankly - are not in a position to excel at a job better than a computer, robot, or other machine. For a creature who evolves over a time span of tens of millennia, this kind of change in a couple of decades (two centuries if you want to count the industrial revolution), this poses quite a challenge.

H1B means nothing except a small eddy in the current of change which will see more and more humans become obsolete.

Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less.

You are spouting the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. It is not true that there is a certain amount of "work" to be done in an economy. The truth is that the amount of work will expand or contract depending on the resources and opportunities available.

he truth is that the amount of work will expand or contract depending on the resources and opportunities available.

"opportunities available"

That's the key right there. It's one thing to spout economic theory; it's another to apply it to reality - hence the complete failure of the economics profession.

As we shrink the need for labor one way or another; whether robots or importing cheaper labor from overseas or sending the work to cheaper countries (Programming and other high skill work included); there aren't enough opportunities being created for those displaced workers.

So, what are we seeing? Massive underemployment and massive increases into the disability programs. We the US are becoming a nation of retail, fast food, and medical workers - the rest are too old to do anything. We are becoming a nation where one part of the population is serving food and cleaning the bedpans of the other part.

The signs of an over supply of workers and decreasing opportunities are all over the place. Sure there are very few bright spots, but the thing is, there's are more than enough people going after those few positions.

Am I suggesting that we eliminate automation or purposefully make ourselves more unproductive?

Absolutely not - even if that were possible.

We have a systemic problem - too many people and not enough opportunities or resources for that matter. Commodities of all types of been increasing over the long term for over a decade and when more supplies are found, it does nothing but slow the increase - see oil.

Every wonder why there is more and more un/underemployment? It's because we can do more with less.

You are spouting the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. It is not true that there is a certain amount of "work" to be done in an economy. The truth is that the amount of work will expand or contract depending on the resources and opportunities available.

I thought the amount of work to be done in an economy will expand or contract depending on the demand for goods and services. The biggest consumer of goods and services in a free society is the middle class, however, in the US, the middle class has been decimated and actually shrunk. Without the demand for more goods and services, those goods and services won't be provided, hence no jobs. In the past, governments could step in to jump start the economy by temporarily increasing demand. But it can't sustain

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The real thing hurting the job pool has nothing to do with H1-B. That might impact certain jobs, particularly the IT sector, but doesn't explain the high unemployment. The real thing hurting the job pool is that over the past 40 years we have pretty much decimated the middle class and it is the middle class that controls the economy. Without a strong middle class, to keep the economy going, we have relied on government spending.

While it is true the normal view is that 40 hours a week is 'full time'... Obamacare actually treats anyone working 30+ hours as a full time employee (ditto 2x people who work 15 hours each a week).

When you get into these well meaning but poorly thought out attempts at social engineering, you often find such 'unexpected', but entirely predictable results be it companies cutting staff, hours, kicking spouses off of plans, dropping insurance all together.

You are probably correct. Technology does create more jobs than it destroys. The problem is it destroys good paying middle class jobs and creates a lot of minimum wage jobs. That's not a very good tradeoff.

I'm not sure that it's a hard and fast rule that more technology necessarily creates more jobs. We know that that has been true up to this point. However, a lot of those new jobs were for maintaining and supporting the new technologies. When your technology develops to the point where it supports and maintains itself, I'm not sure that will be true any longer.

For example, when I first started working in IT, at a medium sized mainframe installation you needed a staff of about a dozen operators per shift to p